


And Love Repaid

by Drag0nst0rm



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Elrond finds Maglor, Families of Choice, Fix-It, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Or possibly the other way around
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-28
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2019-09-01 23:11:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16774831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drag0nst0rm/pseuds/Drag0nst0rm
Summary: It was never about owing.





	And Love Repaid

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own the Silmarillion.

When he eventually returned them, Gil-Galad would accuse him of kidnapping the twins which Maglor thought was rather unfair. He was guilty of many crimes and had written a song that admitted to most of them, but kidnapping was still a crime that belonged solely to two of his brothers. Kidnapping required intent and a removal of someone from people or places they were supposed to be with, and by the time he’d found the twins, there was none of the latter, and he was barely in a state of mind sufficient to intend to keep walking forward, much less anything so complicated as kidnapping.

Kidnapping also failed to fully appreciate what had actually happened, although to be fair to Gil-Galad, only Maglor and the twins knew what had actually happened, and the twins had quite possibly forgotten. Maglor had never told anyone because it wouldn’t have been fair to the twins to tell the story that way, since - Since -

Since when most people heard what had happened, they pictured Maglor finding them quite intentionally and making the calculated decision to take them while the twins screamed and cried and struggled.

While what had actually happened was - 

Elrond _had_ been crying, actually, which was quite understandable even setting aside what had happened to Sirion because his leg was pinned beneath a fallen rafter and was most certainly broken. Elros had been futilely tugging on the rafter. Given that he was six years old and small for his age, he had not been having much luck.

Maglor might have walked right past them - not for any reason, good or bad, but simply because in the blank numbness that came from the fact that two more brothers were dead, another city was sacked, and still they had nothing, he was in no real state to notice them.

Elros, however, was shouting at the top of his lungs for help, and when that didn’t manage to pierce through Maglor’s fog, he came over and started tugging demandingly on his clothes.

It was entirely understandable, really. Maglor was so covered in filth that it was impossible to tell that he was in Feanorian red, and the boy was six. He had no doubt been told that if ever he was in trouble to find the nearest adult. Likely no one had anticipated that the closest adult would ever be a kinslayer.

So Maglor had done the only thing he could, really, and lifted the beam and then sang healing and painlessness to Elrond in a soft lullaby as he lifted him up in his arms. Elros had latched determinedly onto his cloak, and it was only then that Maglor realized that whatever Elros had seen, it had already been more than enough, and he shouldn’t have to see more. 

He crouched down and said, “You can climb on my back if you like,” and Elros had, and he’d even obeyed Maglor’s instruction to tuck his head down so he couldn’t see.

Elros hadn’t stopped talking the whole way back to the ruins of the main square where the remnants of their army was gathering. About how long Elrond had been there, about what all Elros had tried to get the beam off, about how Elrond had only screamed the once when the beam first fell and never after that, about how that was a nice song Maglor was singing, only it wasn’t the one their mother sang when they were sick, that one went like this -

To this day, Maglor wasn’t sure if Elros hadn’t understood what was going on or had understood but been in shock. He never asked about it because - 

Well, because the typical image in people’s minds, of Maglor carrying off two valiantly fighting princes, one under each arm with a scowl on his face was easier for most elves, narratively speaking. Because it captured the core roles of each of the players better than the truth, which was that Elros hadn’t even known to be afraid until they reached the square and he’d looked up and hissed, “No, the other way, the bad men are there - “ before Maedhros, with relief in his eyes, had greeted Maglor, and Elros had understood.

He’d grown very, very still on Maglor’s back and then said, in a voice that shook remarkably little for a boy his age, “But I don’t want to die in the woods,” like that would make all of this somehow go away.

Maedhros had gone stiff.

Maglor had said, very firmly, “You aren’t going to die. In the woods or anywhere else.”

Which in hindsight had been a stupid claim to make, given everything, but it had been the truth for as long as Maglor had watched over them, and that was more than he normally got.

Later, most of those closest to him would come to Elrond with some variation of the same question: Why didn’t you tell me you were looking for Maglor again?

The answer, which he explained calmly, patiently, and above all _repeatedly_ was that he hadn’t been. If he had, he very much doubted he would have found him.

He had looked for Maglor throughout much of the Second Age and had finally been forced to conclude that his foster-father had died in the sinking of Beleriand, or, if not then, in the later wars against Sauron. It was the only explanation he could think of for why no one had heard even a whisper of him. The Sons of Feanor were many things, but unobtrusive had never been one of them.

That Maglor would avoid Gil-Galad’s camp he understood; that he would avoid the remnants of his and his brother’s followers, Celebrimbor, Elros, and Elrond himself . . . That was less comprehensible.

He and Celebrimbor rarely spoke of him directly but given that Celebrimbor was not nearly as done with the house of Feanor as he sometimes claimed, Elrond did have to wonder -

\- given the amount of red Celebrimbor tended to wear - 

\- given the way his city was open to absolutely everyone, including kinslayers -

\- given the way he had argued with Galadriel, who was not at all ready to forgive and forget - 

\- Well, Celebrimbor had been proud and had kept his family colors, and had been determined not to repeat his grandfather’s mistakes and so had trusted freely, and had, at the end, not gotten along with Galadriel, probably due to Sauron’s influence. One exhausted conversation was not enough to jump to any conclusions about just how desperate Celebrimbor might have been to cling to the last reachable remnant of his immediate family.

Regardless, the point was, Elrond hadn’t been looking for Maglor. He’d been looking for orcs.

He ended up finding both.

The general story that spread the quickest was that Elrond and the patrol that was with him had rescued Maglor from the orcs; the slightly subversive story he’d heard whispered suggested it was the other way around. The truth was not nearly so clear cut.

They had fought, hard and fierce until Elrond was forced to spring off his wounded horse and wade into the fray, and that was about the point that he’d noticed that there was one more elf whirling through their foes than there should have been.

Maglor wasn’t singing. If he’d been singing, Elrond would have recognized him at once. Instead, he was cutting his way towards Elrond with grim determination until they were fighting back to back. 

And then all the orcs were dead and Erestor, who meant well but did not always think quite as much as Elrond would wish before he spoke, said in a voice of incredulous accusation, “Maglor?”

Elrond turned to face his foster-father - Scarred, starved, and dressed in little more than rags but still with the light of Aman bright in his manic eyes.

For a frozen moment Elrond was sure the last son of Feanor would bolt, or that the wary positioning of elvish swords would provoke one last fevered kinslaying.

Instead, Maglor allowed his sword to fall from his hand onto the bloodstained beach. His knees hit the sand seconds after it, and he stayed there, silent and unseeing, until someone finally thought to move. 

“Are spiders edible?” Maglor asked with weary hope as he let himself into Maedhros’s tent.

“No,” Maedhros said without looking up from cleaning his weapon, but for a moment he sounded like the older brother Maglor still remembered instead of the brittle iron he’d been forced to become. He finally looked up with a frown. “I haven’t had to answer that question since the Ambarussa were seven. Why do you ask?”

“Because the scouts found a nest of them to the north of us,” Maglor said, “and we’re running out of other options.”

Maedhros’s face darkened. “Ah. That kind of spider.” He looked away. “It is . . . possible,” he said. “But I would not at all recommend it. Ungoliant’s children devour hope as easily as their mother did light, and ingesting them only internalizes the problem, as it were.”

Maglor didn’t ask when Maedhros had learned this. He didn’t have to. Maedhros only got that look on his face when thinking of one forbidden period of time.

“He enjoys killing them as much as we do,” Maedhros said distantly. “I suppose it allows him to feel superior to Her.” Maedhros shook himself and some of the brittleness faded from his eyes. “We’ll keep heading south. There will be more to hunt there.”

They hoped, at least, much good it would do them. They could never stay south not long, not when their father’s gems called them from the north. 

“Until then, we’ll just have to cut rations again,” Maedhros went on, and Maglor was forced to step in.

“The twins are barely getting enough as it is,” he pointed out. He had seen some of the children of Men who had been given too little to eat. Seen how it had twisted their bodies and stunted their growth. He would not allow the same to happen to the children under his care.

“We will move quickly,” Maedhros promised. It was all he had to offer.

Maglor shut his mouth, nodded, and left to tell the quartermaster.

The twins’ rations were not cut. He cut the extra out of his own until Maedhros noticed and began to share a bit of his so that the difference would not be so great. Not long after, the rest of the camp noticed, and then they all went with a bit less to make sure that their bright gleams of hope endured.

But when rations had to be cut yet again, even the children had to make do with less. Maglor sang to distract them from their hunger, and it worked, more or less.

“You have to eat,” Elrond said quietly. 

Maglor just sat on the bedroll he had been given. If he recognized the bowl of soup in front of him as food, he gave no sign of it.

Whatever force had propelled Maglor to survive all these years on his own seemed to have deserted him now. Elrond was determined to call it back.

He began humming a song he’d not heard in an Age or more. Maglor used to sing it during mealtimes when food was scarce, and he hoped that somewhere Maglor would still associate the sound with hunger.

Maglor’s fingers twitched as if reaching for the strings of a harp to accompany it.

But he at last looked at the bowl and began to eat.

The cloak had once been as red as the flames of his father’s forge. By now, the color had dulled, and it was tattered besides, but it was still thick and long. Long enough that if he cut it carefully, he could, perhaps, manage to make two cloaks of it, one for each tiny elfling.

That would, of course, leave him without a cloak, a prospect that even an elf did not relish when faced with the Enemy’s bitter winters, but there wasn’t enough cloth to make two new cloaks, however small, without sacrificing something old. Elves bore the cold better than men did; who knew how the half-elven would fare? Elrond and Elros would need cloaks far more than he did, and he had not been overly fond of warmth since the Dagor Bragollach in any case.

It was, he determined quickly, the right decision. Even with their new cloaks, the twins grew cold quickly as the days shortened until it grew bitter enough to outweigh their fear and they took to pressing up against him to soak up whatever warmth they could.

He convinced Maedhros to help him hunt down enough beasts and cure enough fur to line their cloaks so they wouldn’t have to. 

The shivering lessened, but they kept doing it anyway, and Maglor couldn’t really claim to mind.

Elrond was almost of a height with Maglor now, so it was his own clothing he raided to give Maglor something better to wear for the ride back to Imladris. 

“You don’t owe him this,” Erestor pointed out from behind him. “You don’t owe him anything.”

Elrond wasn’t sure if that was true or not. He supposed it depended on your perspective. Regardless -

“It was never about owing.”

Elrond hadn’t cried since his leg had first broken. Maglor was fairly sure that wasn’t healthy. Elros had, some. Angry tears, mostly, but other, quiet ones too when he thought he was alone with his too silent brother. Elrond didn’t. 

Not until that winter, curled up against Maglor, right after Maglor had started a cheery song about home.

Maglor’s voice faltered

“Don’t stop,” Elrond whispered.

Maglor sang on.

Elrond hadn’t meant to let his composure slip in front of Maglor, but there was only so long it could hold before that blank mask.

“Ada,” he whispered, voice breaking a little. He started to turn away so that Maglor wouldn’t see his over-full eyes.

But he saw a flicker of movement and stopped.

Maglor had frowned and then -

Then he started humming, every note still perfect, and Elrond recognized it as one that sang of home.

**Author's Note:**

> With Tumblr going crazy, I'm importing as many of my works from there as I can. I'm not sure what to do about the bullet point fics, so if you have any suggestions, let me know.


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